Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Good, now we have that out of the way I can.. well.. not really write much at all. I have spent the past three hours designing various charts in Illustrator and now I'm too tired to actually write anything yet. So it'll have to wait. Yeah, I know.. I'm terrible. But at least, when I do get all the charts done I can make an awesomely long post about the weather and how our journey has gone so far. Right now I wouldn't be able to tell much anyway since everything is in a state of uncertainty. Today I filled out all the various forms that are required when letting (renting) a flat (an apartment). Now we're waiting to see.. do we get the apartment or not. So hopefully you'll bear with me as I promise to bare with you soon enough.. soon, my precious..

If nothing else, maybe you got a good chuckle out of the title?

No? Okay.. here's a picture of the palm tree that grew in the back yard of the first accommodation (link goes to our specific accommodation) we rented when we arrived in England. Many thanks to Duncan, he was great.

Sunday, 27 May 2012

For once.. I have made good on my promise. In one and a half hour we're relocating to Maidstone, after which I wouldn't be able to finish the Sittingbourne Sessions without lying about our location. Now, my conscience is guilty-free. Feels good.. Mmmm.. Oh yeah, guilty-free..

Anyway. Here's one cover and one of my own songs.. I did two of my own, but the vocals were barely existent on the second one, so I will re-record that once I have gotten a microphone stand. I also separated them so you can easily listen to the one you like the most on repeat.. you know, because I'm such a nice guy or something.

Friday, 25 May 2012

Why part III you might be asking yourself. Well.. beije already so nicely did part I and part II. And well.. whilst prototyping for NHL v.4 I wanted to see if I could get form elements to behave nicer.. in other words.. to actually style them. At which point I blatantly stole (expect beije gives out everything without a license, so not technically not stealing..) his Javascript select parser.

"Select" not pictured because I haven't gotten around to that yet.

So far I haven't actually gotten around to doing much about beije's select parser, but after mucking around with checkboxes and radiobuttons in my own prototype I came to thinking.. I should share the stuff too. But the NHL v.4 prototype is ugly, semi-commented at best and filled with unused codes because.. well.. it's a rough prototype.. it's me playing around with codes for the fuck of it. It also uses .svg graphics a lot.

So instead of sharing my complete mess of a code I thought I could re-write the checkbox/radiobutton parts and add it to beije's Javascript select parser.

It's still pretty quick and dirty. Tested and working in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Not as much in Explorer (hover state doesn't work), but then again beije's was a bit iffy there too. Just like beije's though it retains some backwards compatibility, any browser that doesn't support opacity probably won't support pseudo selectors either and thus it falls back to normal checkboxes and radiobuttons.. I think.. Perfectly semantic though, as there are no extra containers or shit like that.

I put in a dropbox share for now. Here you go. And like I said, all the kudos goes to beije for the select part, I had nothing to do with that. I just expanded on it.

Being Friday and all, I thought I'd give you one last reference to the original author. And I just did. :)

Monday, 21 May 2012

Here's.. finally.. a new video. It's quick, dirty and to be perfectly honest, a bit shit. But a sort of, good shit I suppose.. adequate bowl-movement perhaps? Remember months ago I sort of promised I would upload a video of me singing Accidents Can Happen, because that's the song I sang when auditioning for Idols? Well, I figured that they might upload a video of it, because I did an extra take for some behind the scenes web stuff, but alas that never made it to their website. So here's the song I sang for the Idols judges + two more songs. Partly because my wife thought I did the Kent song better (she's right) and partly because I thought it would be fun to do a little Bruno Mars.

Obviously my plan is totally to make a part II to this. But you know me, one doth never know if I will.

Friday, 18 May 2012

Interview done and I feel as though it went very well, come start of next week we'll see if I was right. And not just that, it feels like the kind of place where I would sincerely enjoy working. So double awesome!

So yeah, to all of my many, many (seven) readers out there, fingers crossed and let's hope for greatness.

Monday, 14 May 2012

It was delicious. Oh, well.. it was okay at least. Goodbye Finland. As soon as I've gotten the worst of the travelling smell of me,.. that and the smell of cat urine. Don't ask. Anyway, as soon as I have taken care of the smell I am going to make a post about the differences between Finland and UK, some common myths regarding the weather and such. So you know, stay tuned and what not. Now I need to go find some food.

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Too much stuff to deal, getting things in order before we go. So I present you with an interlude whilst you wait for something to actually read. Here's a picture of handsome fellow, whom I would totally do if I was into penis. I'm maybe a 1 or 2 on the Kinsey scale though.

Saturday, 5 May 2012

People think we're crazy. Rightfully so I suppose since we have decided to move without accommodation and without employment. And without sufficient funds.

To be fair though, sufficient funds is a subjective matter since that mostly pertains to lifestyle choices. Our lifestyle is one of a very moderate nature so in that sense we should/could be fine. Will we? Only time will tell I suppose. Things are hectic to say the least as of right now.. and quite stressful. Between coordinating every last nuance of the "selling our shit" and "trying to not get scammed by people offering accommodations at ridiculously low prices" we have our hands full. I was being polite with the whole "distrustful" thing as I didn't want to point fingers. But in all honesty I should point fingers, if for no other reason than to enlighten others.

There are many people who have been scammed. People who have lost their hard earned money because they are, well.. partly because they are a bit naive but as far as I am concerned, for the most part, because they want to believe in a world that is more honest. A world where people do want the best for each other and are willing to help one another. Sadly, the world we live in is no such world. It's a cruel, dark and rancid Petri dish waiting for it's next victim to swallow. I wish it wasn't so, but wishing isn't going to make a difference. Changing the small monkey sphere you live in might, and even that's a stretch. I still want to think that the only difference you can make is the one that starts with you.

But back to pointing fingers. Because I want to whether I should or not. So far persons/people from Nigeria and The Netherlands have tried to scam us into believing that someone would realistically rent a 2 bedroom flat in South West London for £500. Should or does this reflect badly on everyone living in Nigeria and The Netherlands? Of course not, I am sure there are more honest people there than dishonest. But "Hey!" if you are from either of those countries and you're reading this. Those loud fuckers are making the rest of you look bad. Just thought I would let you know. Don't shoot the messenger.

So.. stressful yeah. Things are quite stressful. We're moving in less than 10 days and I suppose this story of mine will continue then..

Not to make this into a cliffhanger or anything like that. It's just the way things are right now.

Hey, my name is Carlos Eriksson and I have designed things from user interfaces, websites, t-shirts to board games. I also compose my own music/play guitar and roast coffee. In short, I like to keep myself busy.